I'm a public employee in California (community college instructor). Brown's proposed cuts will affect me directly. And that's fine, I guess. I didn't vote for the guy, of course, but I'm pretty convinced that the same hard choices would have to be made regardless of who had won. At least he's proposing deep cuts in addition to extending the tax increases. I could do without the tax increases, since they haven't proved to augment revenues.

I personally think that CA is effed. Period. Brown may be able to mitigate the effects of the collapse for a time, but the story has only one ending - default. I'm stuck here for a while and so I'll just try to enjoy the ride down as best as I can.

The way things work with the insane liberals is that initially, for a long time, many decades, they are frustrated by attempts to limit the scale and scope of their agenda, going back to the 1950's. So, they think that if there isn't enough money for the state, the cause is conservatives or some such limiting taxes (and at that time this was true). However, there is another stage later in the game where the hard limits of the world kick in and it does not matter how high taxes are set because the productive population is destroyed or moves away. There's another thread on SF about how other states are now trying to draw away what remains of California's productive industry (I sure hope they don't bring in the Mexicans with 'em).

Anyway, deluded liberals are not mentally prepared to run up against these physical limits. It blows their mind that liberals like them could control the entire government, and still have to cut back social programs. There are probably a large number of liberal people in the population who cannot understand physical laws and limits and are absolutely shocked to hear talk of budget cutbacks after "their" guy (e.g., Brown, Obama) won the election, and many of them will need psychological counseling after hearing Brown or Obama talk of cutting spending.

I forget to mention that there is even a higher level of liberal insanity - if they are allowed to go that far. Once they start seeing people leave, they then try to stop them, like the communists did in Eastern Europe with walls and guard towers. Like the haunting Eagles' song, they turn the place into a "Hotel California" where "they just can't kill the beast ... and you can never leave".

"Let me be clear. Although many businesses and people have fled our state, we are still far too overpopulated with people that have money. In order to make sure every person or company that has money moves to Texas, we are going to tax the living crap out of them until they finally get the message that we don't want them here. When they are gone, we will be rid of these annoying people and can have our third world paradise.

Once this first goal is achieved, we will then tax the entire country by filing bankruptcy, so that those wealthy people and businesses, now thankfully gone, will still have to give us their money, which we still want. In the end, we will have to do nothing and get everything handed to us, just as I, governor Moonbeam, am now handing everything over to you. We don't need to create wealth! The US will give us theirs!

In closing, don't do anything. Don't look for a job because the company you are applying to is about to move to Texas. Just go to your local government administrative branch and get your free Section 8 housing, your unemployment hand out, and some free government cheese and wait. Soon we will be raking in the wealth of the entire country while we sit around and watch The View and CNN."

I didn't expect anything good from him, but overall I like his plan. I like the 12.5 billion in spending cuts. Finally someone is proposing some real cuts for those lousy welfare scum and lazy government bureaucrats. Also I like that the tax hikes will be put on a ballot, where I think they will almost certainly be rejected by the voters. I don't get anything from the lousy government, so all these cuts won't affect me at all. The California government has always wasted a lot of money and it doesn't need to be doing that in the first place! I couldn't care less about those stupid mexican mothers who won't get free child care. They shouldn't have had kids in the first place if they can't afford to pay for them. They have no right to have kids and make other people pay for them! As for California's anti-business laws, that doesn't affect me because I make my money on the internet and I plan to make even more money via the internet and foreign investments.